For What It's Worth Analysis

Music as Expression: Powerful Art

Have you ever thought about music? About how many genres exist? It would be hard to know them all, considering there are over 1,264 genres. This exorbitant amount of genres doesn’t take into account the infinite amount of subgenres. Any two words put together could be a subgenre. Music happens to be a very expressive form of art, demonstrated by the number of different subgenres there are. The lyrics of many popular songs abide by current events, like every one of Taylor Swift’s songs in relation to her breakups. Musicians, prominent because of their influential and moving songs, are provoked by moving events and in turn create moving events.

Musician’s songs are so powerful because the emotions behind

Hippies, members of a movement of protesters tried to vocalize their dissent and joined prominent artists, intellectuals, and new “ Students For a Democratic Society”(History.com Staff). Many influential figures in pop and society were organizing “ teach-ins” through a lot of mediums such as books by Norman Mailer, speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and music “ For What It’s Worth” all on specific historical events. Buffalo Springfield’s most notable song, “ For What It’s Worth” is a protest song made in 1967, the same year that “ American troop strength in Vietnam was approaching 500,000 and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded”( Buffalo Springfield). Buffalo Springfield’s song was inspired by the protesting for the aforementioned Vietnam War, and was classified as a protest song itself. With the band’s psychedelia style heavily oriented to the hippie crowd, people rallied around it. Buffalo Springfield’s song efficiently captured the attention of the public- demonstrated by the song’s critical acclaim when it reached top 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. The national Gallup poll in early February of the next year showed only 35% of the population approved of President Johnson’s handling of the War and a full 50% disapproved of his negotiations, which emphasized the importance of widespread media like songs and various

One example of such music is psychedelic rock. Psychedelic rock is inspired by the psychedelic culture which is meant to use music to “ replicate and enhance” LSD effects( O’Brian). LSD was made popular by the hippie movement which gained said popularity through the Vietnam War protests, and inspired future artists to empower their songs. Post- Punk is a rock music that “ emerged from the punk movement of the 1970’s” which was loosely based on rock and jazz/funk which was described as “ a fusion of art and music”( O’Brian). The individuality expressed by artists through their songs was not a unique phenomenon. This is just one of many examples of artists creating an entirely new genre of music based on a popular cultural movement. Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills explained “ I’m an observer because I’m a songwriter, and I’m here to spread the news…”, and his form of expression develops into different genres based on the info he needs to give ( R&R.com Staff). This is an in-depth look at some of the darkest and monumental times in history, and explains a musician’s perspective and how he translates his experiences with these events into a song- something interesting, personal, and informative. Music, with its powerful styles and genres, is a critical form of expression that develops and changes as a culture during events.